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National Superior Basketball
The Baloncesto Superior Nacional or BSN (lit. "National Superior Basketball") is the main Puerto Rican men's basketball league. It currently has 10 teams, but has had many teams in several cities of the island. The league was established in 1929. It has produced players that have distinguished themselves in the NBA, European Leagues, and other leagues. Also most of the players in the Puerto Rico men's national basketball team are playing in the league. For the 2011 season will began the 31st of Mayhttp://bsnpr.com/noticias/detalles.asp?r=4895, each team will play 30 games in a single table format. The regular season is followed by a Playoff with the best 8 teams divided in two groups based on regular season standings (1 vs 8,4 vs 5, 2 vs 7,and 3 vs 6). The teams will play series the best of seven. The season concludes with the finals, here two teams compete in the best of seven games. The Vaqueros de Bayamón are the current leaders in all time championships with fourteen. The Atléticos de San Germán have fourteen, and the Leones de Ponce have twelve. History The BSN was a struggling league economically until the 1980s, when, with Genaro 'Tuto' Marchand as President, an explosion of basketball popularity happened all over Puerto Rico. Basketball overtook baseball as the Puerto Rican fans' second favorite sport after boxing at that time. The fact that WAPA-TV Channel 4 transmitted six games a week for the whole island to see, was a major contributor to this change in popularity. These games were shown Sundays at 2 p.m., Sundays at 9 p.m., Wednesday nights at 9, Friday nights at 9, and Saturdays at 2 p.m. and at 9 p.m. During that time, other legends followed in the footsteps of Juan "Pachin" Vicens (Named Greatest Basketball Player in the World at the Basketball World Championship, held in Santiago, Chile, 1959). Among those younger stars, various bright stars soon emerged, such as Mario 'Quijote' Morales, Raymond Dalmau, Jose 'Piculin' Ortiz, Ramon Rivas, Jerome Mincy, Georgie Torres, Angelo Cruz, Angel Santiago, the late Federico 'Fico' Lopez and Rubén Rodríguez showcased their talents to all of Puerto Rico's TV viewers and game goers. After Hetin Reyes took the league over there were economic problems, but in part this is due to the rise in the cost of living. Nevertheless, the league continues to operate with 13 franchises but is looking at the future with optimism. Currently, the leagues games are showcased on Puerto Rico's TUTV television channel. Although some conssesions have been made, even offering Santurce fans free rides on the Tren Urbano train system so that they can attend away games at Bayamón, the league continued suffering monetary loss in 2005, and the basketball tournament was drastically reduced to only nine competing teams. In order to try to attract more fans to the venues in which the tournament is being played. For the 2007 Season, the Morovis team moved to Fajardo and two teams joined back the league, Mayagüez Indians and Carolina Giants. 2008-present Prior to the inauguration of the 2008 season, Henry Neumann resigned as president and entered politics. Felix "Felo" Rivera, then owner of the Criollos de Caguas, was selected to succeed him. Rivera debuted as president on September 22, 2007, when he presided over a meeting with most of the league's staff and other members of the sports community in Puerto Rico. The meeting extended to ten hours and served primarily as a ceremony to officially present him as the BSN president. Several changes to the league's rules were discussed, with two being adopted. The first one being a 50% penalty to franchises with payrolls larger than the $500,000 cap. This had been approved before in 2004 and only Santurce and Ponce failed to stay under the salary cap, however it was abandoned following the conclusion of that season. The main difference was that, with the new rule, the money that the league received with the penalty would be awarded to teams that didn't go over the cap. The second rule approved was that restrictions on second "reinforcement" players were dropped, noting that the quality of immigrant players was supposed to rise. In the meeting, the league announced that the 2008 tournament would begin on March 1, 2008, earlier than in previous years. When September concluded, Miguel Laborde was replaced by Juan Trinidad as the BSN's tournament director. Teams Championships Complete list of BSN Championship winners Number of championships won by teams http://bsnpr.com/estadisticas/lideres.asp?grupo=BS26&serie=1&liga=1&anio=2010&vida=2 See also * Puerto Rico national basketball team References External links * Official site Category:Basketball leagues